Lullabies (2010)

Lullabies are found in every human culture and have been used at least since ancient times. Lullabies are songs of transition – simple, repetitive songs intended to lull children to sleep. Lullabies blur the border between “awake” and “asleep.” They make permeable the boundary between the two most basic states of human consciousness.

Lullabies began as an installation and performance called Lids in the storefront of a museum, The Elsewhere Artist Collaborative in Greensboro, North Carolina. Gochman was an Artist in Residence at Elsewhere in 2007. The work changed daily. Gochman’s photographs documenting the work were first exhibited as a collection in 2008 at the Sara Roney Gallery in Sydney, Australia.

The song Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral (Thats’s and Irish Lulaby) was written in 1914 by James Royce Shannon. It is the lullaby Molly Gochman most remembers being sung to her as a child. In this audio work, Gochman, her mother, and her grandmother are heard singing this song. The recordings are progressively cycled again and again through the reverberation of a gallery. With each cycle, the recordings become more reverberant, until the voices transform into smooth, pure tones.